A technique is conventionally known according to which the number of transmission sessions, processing time periods, etc. of electronic messages transmitted and received among apparatuses in a system are statistically processed and thereby, the states of the apparatuses in the system are monitored. When the electronic messages are statistically processed, a user may wish to classify and process the electronic messages by function, object to be handled, etc. Therefore, each of the electronic messages may foe converted into a form suitable for statistical processing using delimiters, regular expressions, etc. Hereinafter, the conversion of each of the electronic messages into an electronic message in a form suitable for the statistical processing may be expressed as “consolidation”.
When the consolidation is executed for the electronic message, for example, a user prepares in advance a list of consolidation definitions to convert the electronic message; and an apparatus that executes a consolidation process compares sequentially in order of the definitions listed, the consolidation definitions with the electronic message and outputs the conversion result of the consolidation definition that first matches the electronic message. The user may change the order in which the consolidation definitions defined in the list are applied to the electronic messages to improve the efficiency of the consolidation process, etc.
Prior arts relating to the above are, for example, a technique of monitoring a database system without connecting to the database system; a technique of analyzing the processing time periods of transactions executed among servers in a system; a technique of converting an event and a log issued by an application into a common form to be managed; and a technique of enabling concurrent execution of plural orders by preventing, for example, data dependence (see, e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. 2006-338415, 2004-355650, and 2000-148488, and Japanese Patent Publication No. 4610240).
However, according to the conventional techniques, it is difficult to change the application sequence of the consolidation definitions such that the output result of the consolidation process is not changed even when the application sequence of the consolidation definitions defined in the list, etc. For example, when the output result of the consolidation process is changed by changing the application sequence of the consolidation definitions, determination may be difficult as to whether the consolidation is correctly executed for the electronic messages and the user may not acquire an output result as intended.